Island Music on the rocks

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Island Music is the Vineyard’s only music store. Guitars beckon from the window; step inside and you will find instruments hanging from the ceiling and lining the walls. Kids come in after school to noodle on the keyboards; stray tourists check out the record bins, and leave with a ukulele. From the back, you may hear the sounds of manager Becky Williams, or Rich Giaimo, giving a music lesson.

Island Music has been at the heart of the music community since Ed Griggs opened it in 1991. Since then, the shop has bounced from Vineyard Haven to Oak Bluffs and back, and blossomed. Aside from being the Island’s only local source for instruments and gear, the store offers music lessons and repairs, hosts open-mic nights, and provides instruments to the Vineyard’s schools. 

But Island Music’s lease runs out Dec. 31, and this year, it will not be renewed.

Rents are climbing across the Island, and the store’s lease has steadily increased. When Ed Griggs passed away in April, his wife Lea decided the time had come to let go of the business. “I planned on trying to sell it,” she told The Times. “So I did put an ad in the paper, and started talking to people about it. A lot of people had interest in it –– but the lease was daunting. 

“The music store has been open for 34 years,” she continues. “The owner of the building has raised the lease … It’s not her fault. It’s a situation, and the condition of the building, the upkeep and everything else. It’s a big job.”

Island Music shares a building with Blue Fathom Gallery. On August 11, a car drove into the gallery. Island Music was not hit directly, but, Griggs says, “The building [was] in disrepair, and then the accident happened. That shut us down for three weeks, which really hurt.” 

Island Music sells everything from kazoos to high-end Martin guitars. Says Williams: “We’ve tried to have a good variety, and I think we succeeded for a lot of years having a range of lower-end to higher-end things –– because that’s the Island. People are looking for something really cheap, and then some people are here with a lot of money, and I think that’s a part of why it’s been able to stay open.

“Ed had his own way of running it for a long time,” she adds, “and he was a great benefactor in a lot of ways, keeping it going –– it wasn’t really making him a lot, but I think he really just saw it as something that the Island needed, and I think he had a lot of joy in it.”

Lea Griggs explains, “We’ve always tried to keep our prices low. That’s one of the reasons we don’t make a lot of money. But we have to compete with the internet, right?”

Aside from rising rents, the internet has indeed doomed many a brick-and-mortar store. But, as local musician Nathan Hassell says, “The thing that’s different about Island Music compared with other retail stores is that for musicians, you really want to get into the store and physically hold and feel the instrument, and see how it sounds, see how it feels in your hands. Ordering instruments in the mail is always a risky thing. I don’t think the Island should be without an instrument store.”

Griggs would agree: “A lot of musicians use the store. It’s a community thing.” She points out that they also do repairs, and individual orders for people. “It’s a service, for sure. It really has been so good to the music community, and it brings people together. And then the open-mic nights, where people come and play and get to know other musicians –– that’s been going on for a long time.” 

Andy Herr did piano work and carpentry for Ed Griggs, and has hosted the store’s Open Mic Night since 2017. Open Mic Nights take place every other Tuesday, year-round. In the summer, the store overflows; in the winter, the scene is more intimate. “You get to hear these amazing performers — people come out of the woodwork,” says Herr. “And I think that, because it’s in a music store, it has a different quality than bar open mics. [Those are] basically karaoke. Everybody, the environment and community, around [our open mic] is so amazing, so receiving and open. It gives me hope to see that in a small place, in a world that doesn’t have that in a lot of places.”

Williams, who often performs at the open mic with Giaimo, says, “The open mic has been really important to the community –– and I know we’ll work on continuing it somewhere else, but it has been nice for people to just be able to grab a guitar off the wall.”

The music store’s closure will mean the end of its instrument rentals to the schools. “We facilitate the rental of orchestral, wind, and some percussion instruments through a national rental agency [Music and Arts] that’s affiliated with Guitar Center,” Rich Giaimo explains. “We facilitate those rentals in the fall, September into October, and sell them band books and music stands and all that stuff. But they’re going to just have to deal directly with Music and Arts now, and ship instruments back and forth, or be able to take them over to Bourne. And, you know, they run out of valve oil, and they need reeds … 

“In the next couple of weeks,” he says, “I will have the displeasure of having to call Music and Arts and tell them that the contract’s over. “

Herr says, “One of the most important services that the music store provides is not just renting the instruments to the kids, but being able to have one on hand for them to have continuity in their music education, their music programs in the schools. To me, that is an invaluable thing that can make the difference between a kid continuing or not continuing to do something that can be their life’s passion. Enabling that makes it very valuable to a whole generation, to multiple generations of people.” 

The fact that the store reaches all age groups has had a ripple effect. “We have lessons all afternoon after school,” says Lea Griggs. “Rich and Becky both teach, and they’re wonderful with the kids. The kids have a place to come. The parents feel safe. It’s not in someone’s house, you don’t have to drive somewhere else you don’t know and leave your kid there –– it fits in, they can drop them there and run a couple errands. It’s a great place.”

Island Music has been a lifeline for the youth of the community, a constant and reliable musical home base. The store has been incubating musicians for decades, and nurturing the health of the Island in general.

So what is the future of Island Music? 

Griggs has been hoping investors might step forward, or someone might take it on as a mom-and-pop place.

Williams says, “I really do think someone with the passion for it could make it profitable,” but also points out the option of finding a location with a lower overhead. In any case, she says, “It’s a hub. The year-round community needs more hubs. It’s sad that we’re losing this one. It needs to reincarnate as something else.”

Considering the situation, Giaimo reflects, “I can’t imagine the Island going for long without somebody trying to start something else up, to whatever degree –– the Island’s got a pretty lively music scene, and people need stuff regularly on the fly. They need the services that we’re not going to be able to offer anymore. It was partly networking, too.”

Herr has been exploring possibilities. The way he sees it, “It’s either going to be closed and there’s going to be no music store as of next year, or, Situation B, somebody else buys the business before then –– which might happen; there’s people that have courted the business but aren’t necessarily prepared to take on the realities of it, especially operating in a storefront that has a car wreck next to it and stanchions going out on the sidewalk. Situation C is that I and other people raise some money to buy, or have some kind of agreement with Lea, and then take out a temporary lease with [the landlord] to continue to operate as normal until something can get figured out in a long-term plan … [But] I think that if anybody wants to buy this business and is prepared to take it on, that would be a huge load off of everybody’s back.”

Herr noted that music will be the focus of the next open meeting of the cultural district board at the Katharine Cornell Theatre (Nov. 20, 6 pm), and that the fate of the music store is bound to be a topic.

For now, everything in the store is 20 percent off. There is still plenty of inventory, but it is dwindling.

“[The Island is losing] other businesses that are anchors here,” says Lea Griggs. “What’s going to be replacing them –– T shirt shops? Souvenir shops? I don’t know. 

“It’s very sad, because Ed loved the store, and he wanted someone to take it over –– he wanted to retire out of there, and have someone run it for years … he didn’t want to let it go.”